Sunday, June 24, 2012

John Gardner's James Bond LARGE PRINT editions

Here's a unique collection of John Gardner James Bond novels with covers that may not be familiar to most. That's because these are Large Print editions; books published with enlarged typeface for readers who have difficulty with standard type sizes. Until very recently, publishers of Large Print editions created their own original cover art, which as you can see below results in some very interesting designs (I'm especially fond of Role of Honor and Nobody Lives Forever).

The Gardner books appeared in multiple Large Print editions from multiple publishers in the U.S. and UK, but I've selected out a sample assortment below. The only Gardner book that wasn't published in Large Print (as far as I know) was Licence To Kill.

Thanks Christopher. The Armchair Detective/Mysterious Press UK hardcover isn't a Large Print, although it is sometimes confused as a large print because the text is large print size. The good news it it is very desirable and valuable book, so that's great that you have a copy. :)

The print is so large in the Mysterious Press LTKs that there probably wasn't a need for a separate large print edition. I've often wondered if they were trying to cover both markets (regular and LP) with one print run.

Search eBay for the audio books on cassette, often narrated unabridged brilliantly by David Rintoul, they often had the same covers as the ones shown here in the same style as Seafire, Nobody Lives Forever and Barbarossa. I know Licence to Kill was released as an audiobook with this style of cover (it was art based on Tim Dalton's likeness but was less than perfect).

If that's Bond on the cover of Brokenclaw, it seems that art is based on a photo of Lewis Collins in The Professionals TV series. He was often touted by fans in 007 magazine as a decent potential replacement for Roger Moore. This cover may be as close as he got to being Bond.